


You Were Always Mine

by NeverBackDown001



Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Best Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Falling In Love, Idiots in Love, Light Angst, Yes there is a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:27:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29357214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverBackDown001/pseuds/NeverBackDown001
Summary: He was always hers, and she was always his. No matter what, even if they didn't know it at first.
Relationships: Ellie Bishop & Nick Torres, Ellie Bishop/Nick Torres
Comments: 2
Kudos: 59





	You Were Always Mine

They didn't realize it at first. The slow burning fire in their chests that would explode into a giant wildfire that could destroy everything in it's path. They didn't know because they didn't want to accept it. That the simplest touch could set the fire higher and higher, until the flames could touch the sky. 

He saw it before her. He was good with his emotions like that. Yes he hid them under a veil of laughter and sarcasm, but he was in tune with his emotions. He could read others because he could read himself. That kiss in the little scuba shop had sparked the flame of the fire. Her lips on his, the surprise etched on his face. Even if her breath had the terrible smell of garlic pasta, it was still heart-stopping. 

Maybe that was all he would get from her. A kiss while undercover as different people. He was Luis, she was Charlie. Two people fated to love each other, but in reality, they could never. Because he was really Nick and she was Ellie, smart and strong apart, but something terrible if thrown into the lava pit together. 

He was wrong. The kind of wrong you get when you guess on a Algebra test. The kind of wrong that surprises you. 

Maybe he was acting on impulse when he canceled that date for her. He just knew in that moment he couldn't let her go out with this guy named Boyd. What kind of name was Boyd? Even the thought of her going out with some random guy he didn't know angered him, made his heart twist into painful, white-hot knots of anger and resentment. Sure jealousy too, but he just couldn't let it happen. 

He had been wrong to do so though. He had unintentionally made her burst with anger, forcing him to give her a half-ass excuse, a lie that scorched his lips and roof of his mouth because he really did want to tell her the truth, that he wanted to be the one to meet up with her for a date. But she was his co-worker. His best-friend and he couldn't just say that because it would ruin everything. So he kept his mouth shut and didn't say a word again. 

"You don't get to do that to me." She retorts one day as they walk to their cars in the almost empty lot. 

"I said I was sorry." He mumbles, not wanting to delve into this again. But he doesn't really have a choice because he can see the fire burning in her greenish gray eyes

"No Nick." Ellie grits her teeth. "You say I'm like a sister to you, which is a fat lie. I can't do anything because you hover over me. I can't even bring up that I'm going on a date without you getting so prissy about it. You say that you don't care but the moment I say anything, ANYTHING, about guys, dates, it's like I shot your grandma. So what is it?" She demands, her hair sticking into her eyes and her features are like a wild animal. 

Nick can't say anything. He can't say it. He won't say it because he is afraid. So he stares at her in silence, chewing on his lower lip nervously, his hands twitching by his sides. 

"Got it." She spits, turning sharply on her heel and towards the pickup. Before he knows it, she's driven off, leaving him standing by his Jeep, wondering if she'll ever talk to him again.

They don't talk about. Go on with their normal banter, sometimes she glares at him or curses under her breath. He knows she's pissed at him. How can he ever hope to tell her? It would like be destroying the best thing he had gotten in his life. He won't risk that. 

She's all that keeps him alive sometimes. If he lost her, he'd lose himself too. 

"You have an answer?" She asks one day as they head to the empty lot, once again. 

He shrugs. "I- I don't know." He mutters, itching to run to his car and never ever graze this topic again because it makes his chest feel like a hundred pounds are weighing down on him. 

"Then talk to me when you have an answer because i can't keep doing this dance, Nick." She rolls her eyes, huffs, and climbs into her old blue pickup, again leaving him behind in that wonder if hes lost her. He probably has. Because he can feel her slipping through his fingers, and he probably won't know until she's long, long gone. 

That night he lays in his bed, staring at the white ceiling, counting all of the times he's screwed up with girls and relationships. The first time was second grade with Kayla Gardener, Valentines Day, he wanted to get her something, he promised her, and he forgot. The most recent time was less than two hours ago. He's sure that he's ruined it. Stretched it far enough that it won't ever go back to the way that it was. 

He wishes that he wasn't such an idiot. He wishes that he wasn't him. That he was someone else that could be everything that Ellie deserves. He doesn't want to be another reason as to why she shy's away from dates and love. He doesn't want to be another Jake or Qasim or any other boyfriend that's hurt her. But that's just it. He is the kind of guy that hurts girls. 

He always has been.

It's around midnight when Nick can't take it much longer. He needs to fix this. Because if he loses her, he just might fall too. And he'll never get back up the same person that he once was. 

So he throw an old sweatshirt on, jumps into his Jeep and is driving the three and a half miles from his house to hers, where he has to give her an answer before she really does slip through his grasp. 

Should he be doing this? He doesn't know. Nick was never good with declarations of love or anything. Self doubt, anxiety, anger, it all melded into his chest, bubbling in the cauldron that was his heart, sometimes frothing over the top when the heat was too high or not bubbling enough if the heat wasn't really there. He doesn't know how to keep it just right. 

He stops in front of her duplex, contemplating if he should go and knock on that door, give her the answer that she's demanded or if he should go home and never think of it again. 

Either way he's changing the course of his life. 

Nick gets out of his Jeep, bundling those nerves and throwing them away because they're only in the way of him and Ellie. In the way of the path he's choosing. 

Knocking on the door he balances his emotions evenly, so they don't break through the veil he's kept up for weeks and weeks. Hopefully she doesn't answer with a knife or gun in hand. McGee told her that's happened before. Nick can only wonder why she does answer with one in hand. 

There's some cursing and grumbling from behind the door, he can hear all of her locks un-click(she's paranoid sometimes) and the door swings open to reveal Ellie standing there, in his sweatshirt that he left one time at movie night and a pair of oversized sweatpants that are bunched up at the ankles. There are tear tracks on her cheeks, her eyes are reddish pink and sort of puffy, like she's been crying. Hopefully not because of him but he suspects so. 

"What do you want Nick? It's like midnight." She crosses her arms over her chest, frustrated. 

"I have my answer." He steps up on the concrete stairs, so that they're impossibly close. He can hear his heart pounding in his chest, but ignore it, staring down in her greenish gray eyes. 

"What is it?" She whispers, inching back a little so that she can crane her neck up to look him in the eyes. 

He wants to say that he loves her, it's teeming on the edge of his entire existence really. He wants to tell her that she means everything to him and that his life without her would be quite terrible. 

But he doesn't. The words don't come. So he kisses her. Cupping her face in his hands and kissing her. She nearly falls from the suddenness, but he pulls her close to him, feeling her body heat from the sweatshirt she's wearing. It's like all of his heart has exploded, in a good way.

He pulls apart from her. a weak, but surprised look in her eyes. If she didn't feel the same, she would have already punched him and screamed at him. But she just stares at him, his eyes into hers.

"That's my answer." He whispers, cradling her so that she doesn't fall, because he can see her facade crumbling before his eyes. He can see her walls breaking down because of him and he's glad. He wants to see what's inside that over-sized heart of hers. He wants all of it, in every shape and form.

"That's a pretty good answer." She replies softly making him chuckle. It is a good answer. 

"Took me long enough." 

She laughs too, weakly. "Yeah it did. You better make up for it." 

He raises an eyebrow. "Two seconds after I kiss you, you want me to make up for everything I've done wrong?" 

She shakes her head. "No. I mean you're going to make up for all of this time." She's impossibly close to him now, standing on her tippy toes(he's not much taller than her but she still has to.) 

"How do you suggest I do that?"

She leans away from him and beckons him inside, his heart seems to stop at that simplest motion because he knows the moment he steps into her house, it's going to be real, he can;t go back, look back or even think back to before her because she's all he needs now, all he's ever have to or want to need. 

"You sure?" He doesn't want to push her. He's hurt her enough as is. 

"Yeah, I'm sure." She kisses him softly again, this kiss means more than the one before because it means hope, promise, faith and belonging. It means that now, their hearts and souls have bonded and they are each others. 

Maybe they always where. 

And Nick can always be fine with that.


End file.
